Pretty much stopped using it once they decided my 20 year old account must belong to a child and demanded my ID. (Still don’t know why that happened. The account itself is over eighteen and I don’t live in the US where that policy was supposed to take effect.) This doesn’t make it any more appealing.
I remember when you just had, like, banner ads and an ad next to the video. And now you get those gross ads for AI sexbots and stuff.
And I really don’t think the latter is just because of my own search history. I’m asexual and don’t look at porn sites. I also noticed an uptick in the sex ads after YouTube decided I was a minor, so that’s pretty freaking weird.
Then I also get far right ads about how trans people are terrible, that are basically hate speech and propaganda.
I wish other platforms for long form video content existed.
This is tinfoil hat stuff, but based on the ads I’m shown, it’s almost like they pick ones they know won’t appeal to you since they know anger drives up engagement. Google can probably guess from my search history that I’m trans and asexual, since I’ve asked questions online relating to that. And then the majority of the ads I get on YouTube are porn and anti trans things.